I would pass. I bought the W510 a while ago. While it is fairly fast, the laptop was obviously very, very used. It had dings and marks in the case that showed much wear. The power supply is huge and it is a huge power hog. The battery lasts only about an hour to 1-1/2 hours. It also didn’t come with much. There was no fingerprint reader, the CD reader is very basic, there is no camera, etc. It was obviously a stripped down version for corporate usage. I like Lenovo computers a lot, but not the one I bought. I am guessing that the W520 has similar issues, so beware.
Previous Wooters claim that the the lap tops that they received were used and not re-furbished. Read the last few reviews from the last time this was on sale. The link is available from the first or send comment/post regarding this product. As another Wooter posted: Beware! Beware indeed!
I got one of these last time they were offered and I’ve been very happy with it. Very quick system. It has a camera and microphone. It is definitely “last year’s model,” so it is heavy compared to their current models. It’s also less than 1/3 of the current models.
The battery life isn’t up to the standard of their current models, but has been very good for me - around 4 hours pretty consistently.
As soon as I got it, I dropped a larger SSD into it, and now it’s been upgraded to Win 10. Still like it on Win 10.
No complaints about fit and finish. It isn’t new. But it was refurbished.
The W series: mobile workstations, more or less; with more on the workstation part and less on the mobile part.
You’d get this if running Solidworks or Lightwave 3D or similar is an occasional requirement.
As far as condition goes, I gather most of these are off-lease (they’ve been showing up in IBM shop for a while). The depot only replaces what is obviously broken. Otherwise all the dings, scrapes, and blemishes that come with four-ish years of use are the rule rather than the exception.
Just have to mention my continued disappointment that whenever a Laptop that is what we’re looking for comes on sale, it doesn’t include Bluetooth. It’s a deal breaker for us without it. What’s up with that? Are manufacturers seriously not putting Bluetooth into devices anymore?
Oh the W520. I have very fond memories of you. One job ago, this was my company provided laptop. I researched and researched and this is what I asked for and they delivered. it was a true workstation replacement. I had no issue in Photoshop, running multiple virtual machines in VMware Workstation, and battery life was amazing, I got 10 hours out of it.
Fast forward to today and what you’d be getting for your 450 bones… Battery has had 4 years of use now and will absolutely not give you the 10 hours it once delivered. However, if this is still in a good state I’d be tempted to jump on it again if I were in the need for one.
That said, my current Lenovo X1 Carbon is doing great. I can’t quite press it the same as I did the W520, but I’m doing a lot less photoshop now.
Do we have any official word from Woot staff regarding the status of these laptops? Are they actually just dented, worn-out returns or are they refurbished?
The description of “Refurbished” states “buyer’s remorse” – which to me sounds to be “Like New” condition, since they were returned within the return day-limit.
But I’m hearing conflicting stories and it’s preventing me from dropping the dough…
woot doesn’t refurbish their items. They come raw, used and abused. Woot should state these items as “used” and not use the word “refurbished” there are cosmetic issues all over.
Agree. I purchased W510 a few months back. While I’m happy overall about an i7 laptop that upgrades to 16 GB of RAM given the price, it was pretty nasty with gunk still stuck in the top speaker grills next to the keyboard. To this day, I still haven’t been able to get rid of it. Also one of my keyboard keys was broken. The W key keeps popping out.
On a side note, that is just really stupid design by Lenovo. Why would you put speaker grills right next to the keyboard?